Choosing the Right Publication for Your Startup Content

Entrepreneurs often default to solely targeting well-known publications when placing guest articles. With entrepreneurial sites like Entrepreneur and Inc. producing more and more content each day, it can be difficult to ignore the large traffic pulls these household-name publications offer.

However, this can be like fighting through the clutter and confusion of a big-box store. It attracts a lot of shoppers with its wide variety, but it makes finding help or even getting what you need that much more difficult.

Contributing to mainstream publications is valuable for entrepreneurs — I’m not denying that. But as any good marketer knows, you need to reach the right audience at the right time with the right message. With a broader focus, these publications cater to more than one target audience, which means readers can easily skip over your valuable article to view another piece comparing Ello to Facebook.

The real entrepreneurial benefit of a bylined article is reaching your exact target audience in a setting where they want to learn more about a specific industry — something that niche publications excel at.

The benefits of targeting a niche publication as an entrepreneur:

1. An engaged readership:

One of the biggest challenges a startup founder can encounter is building a large, engaged following from the start. Niche publications organically create an exclusive community around content because readers are highly invested in the topics covered. This guarantees that the bylined article you’ve worked hard to write will be read and appreciated, not lost in a clutter of unrelated content.

2. A badge of credibility:

The issue of credibility is critical for budding entrepreneurs. If your startup isn’t trusted, it won’t succeed. Successful niche publications approving — aka publishing — your content provides you with that vital stamp of authority. Simply put, if your publication has credibility in your industry, you have credibility in your industry.

3. A loyal following:

Many niche publications’ readers return daily for fresh industry news and trends. Your startup is more likely to pick up early adopters when you guest post on someone’s favorite niche blog because readers know they can trust the content.

Tips for choosing just the right niche publication:

1. Readership comes first.

You want to be sure that the readers of a niche publication will be interested in — and benefit from — your expertise on a topic. Ensure that the publication’s audience falls into your startup’s target market. After all, exposure to potential clients is why you’re creating a guest post in the first place, right?

2. Tone and attitude must fit.

Always read through some of the publication’s articles to ensure that the tone seamlessly fits with the attitude behind your new company. For example, let’s say there’s a startup publication that includes a lot of touchy-feely pieces about startup life; you’re an entrepreneur, but you know your writing is usually full of satire. That’s probably not a good fit.

3. Logistics matter.

You must understand the formatting and style required by the publication. Look to either the contributor guidelines or other articles on the site for this information. For example, StartupNation readers prefer concise, easily digestible articles, and YFS Magazine sees success in publishing listicles.

As an entrepreneur in the Information Age with expertise to offer readers, editors want your high-quality content. The key is not devaluing your ideas by publishing them for an audience too inundated with other content to pay attention.

]]>Are You Guilty of These 3 Web Sins?https://startupnation.com/start-your-business/launch-a-home-business/web-sins/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=web-sins
https://startupnation.com/start-your-business/launch-a-home-business/web-sins/#respondMon, 27 Jul 2009 10:00:02 +0000http://www.startupnation.com/blogs/?p=4578Whether you are creating a new Web site or reviewing the one you already have, there are three key factors to keep in mind. Are you guilty of these three Web site sins? 1. Visitors can’t get the information they need. This is pretty obvious, but often overlooked. It can be enticing to use fancy videos,...

Whether you are creating a new Web site or reviewing the one you already have, there are three key factors to keep in mind.

Are you guilty of these three Web site sins?

1. Visitors can’t get the information they need.

This is pretty obvious, but often overlooked. It can be enticing to use fancy videos, too many keywords, big graphics, pop-up ads, and more to have an interesting site.

But don’t forget that the whole purpose of having an online presence is to provide information to visitors! Let your visitors know that they have arrived at a site that will give them what they need without having to wait for graphic downloads and video fluff.

2. Your site is hard to use.

Can visitors find solutions to their problems quickly and easily? If potential customers need to dig through your site to find information, you’ll lose them to the competition. Make your navigation and content easy to follow.

3. There is no value.

In addition to key benefits, go that extra step and provide your customers with valuable information they weren’t expecting. This may include tips, expert insights, links to pertinent resources, articles, free reports, and more.

After all, customers don’t necessarily want to hear about your extensive, business success and the specific features of your products and services. They want to know what’s in it for them and how they will benefit from what you have to offer.

Keep it Simple.

Web sites are a great way to bring in new customers, and it can be easy to fall into the trap of offering a lot “bells and whistles” on your site. But you don’t need them.

Just provide valuable information for your customers that is easy to find and read. Solve their problems with fantastic customer service, and your sales, and word-of-mouth, will increase dramatically.

Do you need help optimizing your site for the search engines and bringing in new customers? Please send me a note here or at www.rembrandtwrites.com. I’m here to help!

]]>https://startupnation.com/start-your-business/launch-a-home-business/web-sins/feed/0Is it time for a site redesign?https://startupnation.com/grow-your-business/is-it-time-for-a-site-redesign/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=is-it-time-for-a-site-redesign
https://startupnation.com/grow-your-business/is-it-time-for-a-site-redesign/#respondThu, 09 Feb 2006 04:38:01 +0000http://staging.startupnation.com/wordpress/index.php/2006/02/08/is-it-time-for-a-site-redesign/The venture industry is abuzz about Web 2.0 – a rejiggering of web technologies that promises more interactivity and a better end-user experience. If you have a website that promotes your business, now might be a good time for a redesign. The three top browsers (IE, Firefox and Safari) all render pages about the same...

The venture industry is abuzz about Web 2.0 – a rejiggering of web technologies that promises more interactivity and a better end-user experience.

If you have a website that promotes your business, now might be a good time for a redesign. The three top browsers (IE, Firefox and Safari) all render pages about the same for end-users, and you’d be surprised at what a good developer can whip up on your website’s backend these days.

To give you some idea of the real economic value that Web 2.0 is ushering in, I can speak from the experience I’ve had at my company. We are currently redoing our entire website from front to back, and are building a user and event management system, as well as a tool for digital goods delivery, using the technologies that follow below. It has been two weeks since we finalized the spec, and we’re about two weeks away from launch – not bad for part-time work. This system will free up the time of two employees to let them focus their efforts elsewhere. It is only recently that the following three technologies have come together and have made it possible for us to do this for a low cost, without sacrificing any of the functionality our system needs.

CSS + XHTML: If you’ve touched any part of a web page’s design in the past six years, chances are you had to do your layout with tables. Well, cascading style sheets and standards-compliant xhtml are here to change all of that. A style sheet is a global document that controls the layout of all the design elements of every page on the site. If you get a new corporate logo and with it a new corporate font, you can make a change to the .font attribute in the stylesheet, rather than changing the font on every single page of the site. I looooooooove CSS+XHTML. Updates to non-CSS sites are usually tedious and, therefore, costly.

AJAX: The acronym for "Asynchronous Javascript and XML," AJAX is a set of technologies that can give your site a lot of interactivity. GMail uses it heavily, and more and more sites are coming online with it. If you have any sort of interactivity on your site, you may be able to AJAX it for better usability.

Ruby on Rails: Whoa, this one came out of left field. Ruby on Rails is a framework that lets developers rapidly create tools like weblogs, search utilities, and the like. I’ve been amazed to watch my developer turn out little web apps like blogs and user registration systems in five to fifteen minutes. He actually wants me looking over his shoulder!

If you’d like to familiarize yourself on all of this, start at the CSS Zen Garden to understand the magic of CSS. There is a great accompanying book, and in addition to that one, check out Professional CSS, which is good for beginners and pros alike.

Jesse James Garrett at Adaptive Path has an article about how AJAX works and why you should use it. After reading that, subscribe to the Digg.com RSS feed and check the articles on AJAX that seem to crop up daily.

As for Ruby on Rails, start at the Ruby website and see where it takes you. There are a lot of resources there and much learning to be done.

Any other tips out there from developerland? Am I missing something that might make the site even better?